1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a capsule medical apparatus guidance system that magnetically guides a capsule medical apparatus that is inserted into a subject.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, in the field of endoscopy, capsule body-insertable apparatuses (for example, capsule endoscopes) have been proposed that are provided with an imaging function and a radio communication function and body-insertable apparatus systems have been developed that use capsule endoscopes to acquire in-vivo images of a subject. In order to observe (examine) a subject in vivo, a capsule endoscope is, for example, swallowed by the subject and then, until being naturally excreted, the capsule endoscope moves through the body cavity, such as the internal organs including the stomach and the small intestine, by peristalsis of the internal organs and functions to capture in-vivo images of the subject at intervals of, for example, 0.5 seconds.
While the capsule endoscope moves through the inside of the subject, images that are captured by the capsule endoscope are received by an external image display device via antennae that are arranged on the body surface of the subject. The image display device has a function for communicating by radio with the capsule endoscope and an image memory function and thus sequentially stores the in-vivo images, which are received from the capsule endoscope inside the subject, in the memory. A doctor or a nurse can observe (examine) the inside of the subject and diagnose the subject by using the display of the images stored in the image display device, i.e., in-vivo images of the alimentary canal of the subject.
Proposed is a conventional system that guides a capsule endoscope in a liquid by using a magnetic field, and particularly, a system in which, for guidance of a capsule endoscope in a liquid, the density of the capsule endoscope is equal to or less than the density of the liquid.